Insulation

The experimenter is testing on denim, cotton T-shirt material, wool fabric, thermal underwear, polyester fabric, and a Ziplock bag with no insulator. From research the experimenter learned that wool is a fine soft wavy hair that forms all or part of the protective coat of a sheep. Since ancient times it was harvested to provide clothing and is an important part in textile trade because of its insulation. Woolen fabric is when the woolen system uses short or mixed long and short fiber where no combing is done. It has a rough appearance and is most suitable for blankets, overcoats, and tweeds. Denim which the experimenter is also testing is the material used to make blue jeans and is currently one of the world's most popular fabrics. It is fairly heavy and is made with a blue cotton warp and a white cotton filling (Groilers, 1996). The thermal underwear is duofold, with an outer layer made of 65% cotton, 25% wool, and 10% nylon, and an inner layer made of 100% cotton. It's the winter again and the weather is becoming colder. Each morning many people wonder what to wear to stay as warm as possible, but they aren't sure which material will keep them warmest. The experiment was chosen to see which clothing insulator retains the most heat. "Insulation is material that protects against heat, cold, electricity, or sound." (Science Encyclopedia, 1984). In this case the insulation will be protecting against a cold temperature. The hypothesis is if denim, cotton T-shirt material, wool fabric, polyester fabric, thermal underwear, and a Ziplock bag with out insulating material are tested to see which one retains the most heat, then wool fabric will retain the most heat because it holds an important place in today's textile trade because of its good insulation and the fact that it comes from the protective coat of sheep who need to stay warm and use that as their insulator. Procedure The first thing the experimenter does is fill the inside of five, gallon-sized Ziplock bags with the insulation material so it is one centimeters thick all around. Leave the sixth Ziplock bag empty because it will serve as the control group. Then fasten the insulating materials to the inside of the gallon sized Ziplock bag with adhesive tape. Next the experimenter boils ten pints of tap water and let it cool until (using the candy thermometer) the temperature drops to 49 degrees Celsius. Then immediately fill each of the six canning jars with equal amounts of the water. Immediately after that drop a regular thermometer into each jar, and cap it tightly and as quick as you can. Put the six jars into the six Ziplock bags and seal them. Then put the six jars which are inside the Ziplock bags in the refrigerator for two hours and take the temperature readings every 15 minutes. Repeat all these steps two more times. Then look and compare your readings and note how they changed over time and graph your data and make a conclusion. Results The purpose of this experiment was to find the effect of different forms of insulation on how much heat each type retains to show the best insulators for keeping the human body warm. The mean had thermal underwear retaining the most heat at the end of the two hours. The mean temperatures at the end of the two hours were denim 27 degrees Celsius, cotton T-shirt material 27, wool fabric 28, thermal underwear 28.67, polyester fabric 27.33, and no insulation 19.67 degrees Celsius. The range at the end of two hours was Denim had a range of zero, Cotton T-shirt material had two, Wool Fabric zero, Thermal Underwear three, Polyester Fabric had one, no insulation had a range of one. The range was not big, so the experiment was accurate. Basically the experiment showed most clothing insulations retained near the same amount of heat. Thermal underwear retained the most heat by an average of about one degree over the other insulations. Another major result was all insulations retain much more heat than no insulation. Data Table Conclusion The purpose of this experiment was to find the effect of different forms of insulation on how much heat each type retains to show the best insulators for keeping the human body warm. The hypothesis is if denim, cotton T-shirt material, wool fabric, polyester fabric, thermal underwear, and a Ziplock bag with out insulating material are tested to see which one retains the most heat, then wool fabric will retain the most heat because it holds an important place in today's textile trade because of its good insulation and the fact that it comes from the protective coat of sheep who need to stay warm and use that as their insulator. The hypothesis was not supported because wool fabric had an average of two-thirds of a degree Celsius less than thermal underwear at the end of the two hours of testing. Thermal Underwear retained more heat because it was designed to keep you as warm as possible. Another major result was all the insulations were around the same temperature (27-28.67 degrees Celsius) at the end of two hours of testing and the bag without insulation was only 19 degrees Celsius. The experimenter thinks this is because all clothes has insulation as a high priority and thermal underwear has insulation as its highest priority. The experimenter thinks an experimental error is he always took the temperatures in the same order. The difference in seconds could change the data by a degree. The experimenter could improve this by rotating or making the measuring order randomly. Other areas of study can be the effect of the amount of layers of insulation on how much heat is retained.